You can't Twitter Your Way to a Million Bucks...can you?

Do you Twitter? Tweet? what ever the heck it is called, and even though it doesn't make any money yet, and even though they claim to have 6 million Twitterers (Tweeters, whatever...) it is still a new thing. I really didn't get it, and maybe I still don't , but lately a couple of successful local business people have explained to me how they are using it for bidness. They are not prattling on about what they are eating or what errand they are headed to after they stop Tweeting. Instead, they are using this neat little microblogging tool to keep their members, clients and prospects up-to-date, up-to-the-minute. They provide "members" with special notices and deals. They offer pertinent links to other sites that are really of interest to their followers. They stir up p.r. and create a presence where before they had none. I haven't quite figured out how to use it in my investment banking business, but I could use it to post assignments for my entrepreneurship class, and I'd like to stop reading about everybody else's kids (note to young parents: nobody really cares what the little buggers just did or are about to do; let them Tweet for themselves...oooh, wait, they're too busy on Facebook.) I also just learned that Twitter helped turn a cute whale into a NY Times phenomenon, but not so much into a business success. Is there a there there?